Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Apologies in advance if I didn't give credit for this idea properly - I know it was mentioned by a couple of Sifters - but I couldn't find the particular comments.

Earlier discussions on this can be found here, here, and here. I think the currency idea was originally floated by either SG or zifnab in the 3.0 bugs thread (presumably discarded?).

To be honest, I'm not sure I like the idea. This notion that making high quality talk posts or fixing a lot of dead videos is not as worthwhile as posting a funny cat video is just nonsense. I can go and find a cute animal video in 5 minutes, score a star point and 50+ votes. On the other hand, fixing several dead videos, crafting a quality talk post, or even a quality comment (awarded with applause, though I don't think anyone has gotten a point for that yet), takes quite a bit more time, and IMHO is far more valuable. I guess if the community sees one new video as more valuable, so be it, but it's crazy if you ask me.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

We're not really saying that it would inferior to star rankings jonny, but a separate system entirely.

One example would be to award credits to people who * save posts that then manage to make it to the top 15. That's a nice achievement, but difficult to peg to star points which is our only "currency" now.

I don't want to rely on currency to give a save (or promote) to someone. Will we still have the 4-day wait option available?

Sorry Dag - I was basically objecting to motivation #1, and allowed my bias to color my comments. But if the worry is that star points are being diluted or devalued, I don't see that this would fix it. I mean, other than bragging rights, isn't the purpose of achieving the stars to have the very kinds of benefits proposed for the currency system? And would that not essentially devalue the stars that much more?

Hmmm - still not making my point clear. What I am trying to get at is that there needs to be a generalized discussion of what constitutes a valuable contribution, and how such contributions are rewarded. It seems those decisions have essentially been decided ad hoc so far. The dead pool policy is a great example.

I don't want to hijack this thread to do that, but I'd hate to see what is clearly a major feature of the site discussed in such a limited context.

[edit] I don't mean to imply that earlier decisions were made without much thought, just that many of them were made from a narrow perspective to handle a particular situation.

Sounds like it would involve a revamp of the star system. I'm not sure that it's needed. We first need to ask why this would be a good idea and what the aims of it would be.

The core activity of the site clearly works - submitting and viewing video. Everything else is peripheral to that. I note that in VS 3.0 all the best features are those that make viewing and submitting videos easier.

I vote nay on the currency. It would destroy the VS economy. Right now you gain privileges in VS by longevity and effort. And having to earn coins to preform certain actions seems a bit tedious. On top of that there is no way to control the distribution of said coins. Economics today works on a system of currency circulation. Someone is paid for the raw materials. someone is paid to process those materials into product, Product is sold to the people who compile the raw material buy the product.

The system as I see it is siftbot hands out monies. People horde them, or apply them to different things, or hand them out as incentives. I see a lot of 'back door' deals. "Hey you get a shiny new coin if you upvote this video." Let the man work for a living and earn their keep. Involving a currency is only going to corrupt the community.

gorgonheap has a good point about corruption.

i do think that stars should be for submitting, and should take a long time to earn, and should be respected.

i also think a couple of things like rescuing dead videos deserve some kind of reward, but just a small thing.

i don't think going into a full "money" system is right, featurecreep city!
but something halfway to it would add a bit of spice.

when i see a gold star with 100 on it, i want to know that is someone who found 100 cool videos for the library, a respected member, not just someone who did a load of peripheral stuff but never found anything new.

the main problem that needs to be addressed is encouraging more of the fringe stuff, rather than endless trips down musicvideo/comedycentral/accident lane.

and the daily doublevote was a cool idea

Personally, I love the idea. I'm another of the people who suggested this before — it has never sat very well with me that the 'submitted videos' count gets mixed up with karma bonuses. It seems much cleaner if the published videos are just that, and there is a separate currency for good works.

I can see the possibility for all kinds of emergent properties of a currency system, that are hard to imagine until it has been put in place. Prize packages, purchasing of status, even real-world purchases of VS merchandise....

So, +1 vote from me. Even if it's the only one.

Whoops - sorry arvana! Don't know how I missed that one. But I think the post you link to there is a great example of something that was a much greater contribution to the community than a single video post (despite the nature of the site).

I understand your point - it's not so much about valuing one activity more than another, rather keeping the stars specific to original submissions. But if a great video post goes dead, and someone spends a lot of time tracking down a replacement, isn't that very much in the same spirit of the site as the original post? It's certainly the case that a lot (maybe most) fixes are quick and cheap, but many require a good bit of time - going through lots of hits to find the best quality, doing non-obvious searches for vids that are trying to stay under the DMCA radar, etc. This kind of work seems to me to be essentially equivalent to doing the original searching. And the quick and easy fixes also have their original submission counterparts, e.g., just waiting for the latest TDS clip on comedy central to show up.

I agree that fixing dead videos is a bit of a grey zone. But a fix can't be counted the same as an original submission, regardless of the system in place, so isn't it better to be rewarded with something that you can then make use of later?

Hmm, this is starting to look like the capitalism vs socialism debate!

To shed a little clarity, let me try to add a little more detail about what we're considering for this feature.

First, the star system will not be affected at all except maybe to stop granting stars for activities extraneous to posting videos. This new system would be an addition to the site, not a modification of the existing architecture.

Second, your seniority and efforts will still have plenty of weight because we're considering a maximum bank account size that increases with star level. A side effect of this maximum is that lower level members cannot execute privileged functions. For example, if a *promote costs 100 (totally just making up numbers here) but a Silver Star member's limit is 80, they will never have the ability until they've achieved Gold.

As far as corruption goes, I am honestly unsure how I feel about that. Considering all the fun contests and what-not where the winner receives a pile of *saves, *promotes, and up-votes, there is definitely a market for people to trade favors for privileges. Also thinking about if one was to just go from member to member and ask for a free up-vote in the current system, there's nothing wrong with that and most members wouldn't comply. I like to imagine that members would equally be uninterested in selling themselves for very little in exchange. (I guess if it was for a lot it would be more acceptable?)

To be honest, I'm really blown away by how many people are against this at the moment. I think this is a very revolutionary feature and I really expected everyone to be all for it. Such is the nature of the beast.

After giving it some thought I think something else that bugs me is having too much to do. I love the Sift, I'm here more then anywhere else on the web and adding one more thing to manage or think about is a bit of a pain.

I feel it detracts from the overall purpose of the sift. Were here because we love videos, we love all the range of content and media that we can delve into and the sense of making contributions to a diverse and broad community.

I'm all for bells a whistles but I don't want come to here to compete for improving the community or earning credits to express appreciation for videos I like.

Gorgonheap, if the system is well designed — and I'm sure it will be — then I can't imagine it being a burden on users. Just as it is now, you can participate as much or as little as you want to, and if you choose to keep your life simple, just don't pay any attention to your currency total.

I think it will be great to earn the right to do things like saves and promotes, rather than just waiting for an arbitrary time to count down. And instead of having to get 5 applauds for one star (which sure doesn't happen much), you could get one 'siftar' per applaud.

Lucky, it's a fact of life that change is always resisted. Let's see what happens after a number of other sifters have chimed in to this thread. But kudos to you guys for involving the community in the decision-making process.

One thought: are people in fear of losing status when the currency system is put in place?

To be honest Arvana... I'd tend to say yes. I know change is always resisted and I'm a resister on this issue at least. Perhaps Dag and lucky could give us just a bit more insight. It just seems to add a level of complexity to the sift that I'm not predicting in a good way. Just on simple word I used on myself when I'm trying to improve things at work. I'd like to apply it to the sift; K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Would people fear losing status? I guess that depends on the amount of things that one could "purchase" with sift dollars. If the only thing one could do with these dollars is dole out a *save or a *promote every now and then, well, I'd say that I'm all for it. It would still require that a member contribute enough to the community to earn his gold star to be able to change tags, add/delete channels, as well as ban and all the other things a goldie can do.

I think that keeping the system exactly like it is could work very well with the addition of dollars. If a silver, bronze or below wanted to *save a video, or *promote one, they would obviously have to contribute something to the community in order to do so. And those activities are rather selfless; they only really help the user that submitted that video to get more votes, not themselves.

I still think that star points should be given for things extraneous to posting videos, like fixing deadpools, and earning *qualities. Because like I said before, this means that the user would still be contributing to the community, and should be rewarded as such. Some submissions just come too easily - like Johnny said - The Daily show or Robot chicken. When have those ever not been sifted right to the top? It's like the new Family guy. I mean, hell. I think it was yesterday that there were THREE Robot chickens in the Top 15.

One thought: are people in fear of losing status when the currency system is put in place?

I suppose that is fairly directed at me. And the answer is no. I pretty much assumed when I got gold with less than 30 published vids that it would get revoked. Yeah, I do feel a little awkward about it, but only because it seemed likely to cause a ruckus.

I should clarify my position - I'm not really against the notion of a currency in general (though I do see the potential for abuses/corruption as noted above). I have a problem with the proposal as laid out, because I don't think it will meet the desires as expressed in the motivations. In particular, I think it will further devalue star points, and replaces keeping track of dates for saves, etc with keeping track of currency. Also, all of the contests I've witnessed so far seem to have been quite successful (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Thanks for all the feedback. Some good points to be sure.

Although it does add another level of complexity to the Sift, it would not be obtrusive, and it would be fairly easy to ignore if you're just interested in viewing videos.

I take your point GorgonHeap, that there is a lot of "work" to do here. But I think that's what sets us apart from other sites. There's interesting things to do, build, connect etc. And of course no one is forced to contribute any level of effort, this would certainly continue.

As for losing status - if anything, status would be enhanced, as Sift Money would be channeled to members of a higher star level more frequently. We're thinking of a "salary" based on star level.

I am selling 10,000 sift bucks on ebay right now for $100

^I'll take it!!!!

One thing I know from having created a few MUDs in my day is that a monetary system never works out like you'd hope. They tend to be easily abused and quite inflationary. That said, I'm open to the idea and I really like that you are willing to try out new ideas. But like someone else has said I'd like a lot more details before I could say I support it.

One suggestion that might help avoid abuse would be to publish all transactions someplace on the site.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Thanks twiddles, we're still early stages - and as the idea develops with input from everyone we'll distill it and report.

We do like to try new things - some things stick and some don't, and if this wasn't a winner - we'd move on to the next idea.

Now that 3.0 is pretty stable maybe we need a thread for 3.1 ideas in general.

Lucky, I count three squeaky wheels. Nothing to get blown away by. (maybe four... so far)

I like the idea of earning points (coins, VS dollars, whatever) that can be used for saves, promotes, etc. My original input was a kind of Neighborly Sifter point thingy, where members could give out their daily or weekly (whatever) quota of points to whoever for whatever reason. It would be something ancillary to star points. No star points bought or sold here. Just something to reward above and beyond behavior/effort. If you want to go with a "Sift Money" system, you need things for peeps to spend it on. I can't think of a whole lot other than saves and promotes. Maybe an extra slot in your queue? A double-upvote? Could be like Sifter Power-Ups. Use 'em once, and they're gone 'til you've saved up enough Sift Scratch for another.

As far as fixing dead videos... puh-lease! Easy as pie! FFS, when I fix one, I feel like I have to fix a few at once (and do) so I don't feel so guilty about getting a star point for it. BTW, the "Dead Pool Fixes" thingy on our profile page only lists fixes for which star points were awarded. Be nice if it listed Total fixes/Star Points awarded, or something. That alone could encourage undeading. The way it is now... blech. I'd rather star points meant only one thing... videos submitted that made it out of queue. I'd be fine with losing the star points I got for fixes too. Just do away with star points for dead fixes altogether, and go with just points that can earn self-saves, saves, promotes, etc. Then the Star Point pious among us willn't n'more want for purity.

Fletch makes a good point. Maybe three dead fixes for a star point?
Although some are easy, others are hard to search for when users make creative titles and keywords.

But fletch also has some really good ideas, with the power-ups and all. That would be one thing that would be awesome to have. Except maybe people would use a double vote on their own video... maybe a rule to prevent that?

I totally like the idea.

Nothing to add now at 3am :yawn:

Don't know, I was going to sit down and start fixing some dead videos as since I'm not part of the top 6 or 7 people that get their videos voted for (I'll put something in, doesn't get any votes...then one of the elite put the same video in and it makes it out of the que...so go figure).

SO, since I can't really contribute here, I thought I'd do something constructive like fix a few broken links. I fixed one and got a point and it was nice and everything...then I went looking for the second one, didn't quite find it right away and had to do some pretty involved searching before I found the exact video that was broken...and it told me that I had been awarded a point to soon. Ok, that's fine I guess. I suppose my only insentive should be to just fix the broken links and contribute my time...with only a "job well done and thanks" as a reward.

Or how about this...do away with star-points altogether. Who cares that Ant has over 250 stars or so-and-so only has 2? Should be open for someone to register here and then vote. If your video makes it out of the que, pat yourself on the back and get nothing more. Make this a real Web 2.0 site and not be reserved to the top 15 or 20 people that seem to be the only ones who get a video out of que. You get a core group of people that all know each other, NATURALLY they're going to vote for their friends videos...so their friends get more stars and they in turn get more stars when their videos are voted on by the same people.

It's all the usual suspects...look for yourselves, don't take my word for it. Either that, or when a link goes dead and THEY don't maintain it, they lose that star. They post here to get a star, why shouldn't someone coming up behind them fixing their dead links get one also?

BTW, deathcow, I had to Addblock your avatar. It was giving me the creeps.

I don't know about all that, goofball. I've only been a member here for two months and I have my first star. Maybe that's not a whole lot. Maybe you just post at the wrong time of day.

Timing does matter, but he isn't completely wrong. Definite cliques and voting blocks, although more members spending more time in the queue would negate that. Easy to get discouraged when you see video after awesome video largely ignored while complete shite makes it out of the queue in hours. Just keep submitting and requeuing GJ.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Total derail, but how about a variable escape level for "P" members where their first post gets out at "7"?

What do you mean by that, dag?

Sounds tempting Dag, but I think you will end up with even more dupes slipping through the cracks.

I would vote nah. I think there are many here who already give "P" vids leeway and throw 'em a vote when they might not have had a non-probie submitted, so I think they already have it a little easier. I do it.

Talk about derail, how about all vids in the Queue being completely anonymous?

Ah. I'm just an idiot. I think that 10 is easy enough to get. And then you consider that you only really need nine.
Edit: The anonymous idea is really good. +1 vote for that.

how about all vids in the Queue being completely anonymous?
hell yeah!

Anonymous? How would I know which video I posted?

Seriously in many cases it might not make as much difference as you think. It's an intriguing idea, but I'd like to see some evidence that it would help before the tinkering starts.

edit: oh and 7 votes for a P-type? Don't think so.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It would be a very interesting experiment. I applaud you sir. The only difficulty would be weeding out self-linkers.

Well, dag, maybe something like you can't see the username until after you view the video?
At least that way people don't skip a video based upon the user that submitted it.

"One example would be to award credits to people who * save posts that then manage to make it to the top 15. That's a nice achievement, but difficult to peg to star points which is our only "currency" now." <- Yeah, *this* I like.

"When have those ever not been sifted right to the top? It's like the new Family guy. I mean, hell. I think it was yesterday that there were THREE Robot chickens in the Top 15." <- Various topics/video genres have hot and cold spells. And as the Woohoo channel proprietor, I've seen many vids that lay sprawled out on the sidewalk with a bottle in their hand and a distinct lack of attention.

V. important: "One thing I know from having created a few MUDs in my day is that a monetary system never works out like you'd hope. They tend to be easily abused and quite inflationary. That said, I'm open to the idea and I really like that you are willing to try out new ideas. But like someone else has said I'd like a lot more details before I could say I support it." <- to avoid this problem, make sure that applaud Siftar credits (arguably the easiest to award) will be limited, say to a certain daily rate. So a low-rank sifter can at most give an applaud worth credits *once* per day. Perhaps up it to two-five depending on star level. This controls the amount of credits that get doled out (avoiding

Also, a novel idea (I'd like to think): some "costs" could be variable, depending on Sift activity: say, if the Sift is quiet on the front page, cost of a *-promote would drift down to a pre-set floor. If videos are being published fast and furious, up the cost, to discourage people from spending Siftars on a promote that'll just flush recently sifted vids off the front page.


Also, have you Lucky/James/dag, considered 'buying an extra submission' slot as another 'consumable'? Again, cost can vary depending on size of queue. Floors/ceilings might be a Very Good idea in either scenario to avoid wackiness.

I'm going to submit this comment, having read halfway through, to avoid losing what I wrote up so far.

"Don't know, I was going to sit down and start fixing some dead videos as since I'm not part of the top 6 or 7 people that get their videos voted for (I'll put something in, doesn't get any votes...then one of the elite put the same video in and it makes it out of the que...so go figure)." <- consider how you tag/label the vid. This can make a huge difference half the time.
"Or how about this...do away with star-points altogether. Who cares that Ant has over 250 stars or so-and-so only has 2? Should be open for someone to register here and then vote. If your video makes it out of the que, pat yourself on the back and get nothing more. Make this a real Web 2.0 site and not be reserved to the top 15 or 20 people that seem to be the only ones who get a video out of que. You get a core group of people that all know each other, NATURALLY they're going to vote for their friends videos...so their friends get more stars and they in turn get more stars when their videos are voted on by the same people." <- the reason people know each other is because the Sift has developed a community over time. The star thing was always a cute method of distinguishing experienced Sifters, just like you put AOC or VQA on bottles of wine of a certain category/quality.
I was going to say that the key difference, of course, is that unlike a wine's designation, which relates to taste, the stars are about giving you moderator powers.

But in addition to moderator powers, they do, in a different way, represent 'taste', i.e., it shows your 'tastes' are to some degree, accepted by the community, 10 up-votes at a time.

The unique allocation of moderator powers makes the Sift possible - without it, either:
1. the triumvirate (dag, Lucky, James) would have to do everything,
2. they would have to set-up a special clique to help,
3. everyone would have the ability to everything (chaos! - see Wikipedia).

Also, brushing civility aside for a moment, I have to say that "Make this a real Web 2.0 site..." makes me vomit a little in my mouth a little bit.

Rhetoric and explanations aside, I also see one of every star category on the front page right now, and a strong proportion is bronze/silver or non-starred. Of the 15 vids, 3 are non-starred folk, 4 bronze, 2 silver, 3 plain gold, 1 hundred gold, and a pair of black diamonds. Seems like a fair breakdown to me.

It's been said before, and it'll be said again: tons of vids get discarded on the way up to a star. And even though you have a star or gem, you're still going to have discards among your sifts. As you gain experience and become more selective you experience this less frequently, but it affects everyone and is part of how the Sift Works.

Also, regarding the anon thing, I don't skip videos based on who submitted them but rather on the title and whether or not it grabs my interest.

And that's not just me 'saying' that - b/c I've been hella busy lately I'm mostly relying on the top 15 and the top 15 expiring lists, which don't ID the user. And the "related" vid links too, which also don't ID the user.

If you want to play it blind, use those lists. If you have time to sift more vids than that, just watch them in order if you're so inclined.

Shortest comment. I win.

Win what?

twiddles wins now!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Well said Krupo.

Damnit Twiddles!!

-

I think, if you're talking about the monetary system as primarily a way to reward members for non-posted work then I have a feeling it will be fine, provided you keep the inflation high - lots of Siftars to "buy" a *promote or whatever because then it's just a nice little extra and people won't get to hoarding with it. THe problem, as I see it, is when you are handing out something meant to be a nice little bonus and the next thing yu know people are exploiting it for means which it was never intended. SUch as selling on ebay for cash. Hey, if people will pay cash for platinum in an MMORPG they'll pay for siftdollars.

My concern is possibly based in ignorance since I"m a new member (and hey, I've still gotten no answer to my problem with purchasing a charter membership but not being credited as such but anyway) - what I am concerned about is the whle notion of "saving up" things like *promote and *save and upvotes
Isn't the purpose of the sift to discriminate between good videos, worth keeping and ordinary or even bad videos? If the higher-ranking members here have the power and ability to put a video up on the sift or make it permanent or whatever other godly thing they can do, then shouldn't those be abilities and powers that are held back and reserved for people who have proven to wield such power responsibly?

That is to say, you start giving people the ability and/or power to move videos based on whim and fancy and what happens to the quality of the overal sift?

As was pointed out tangently but correctly, people tend to promote and further their pals - nothing wrong with that! - but that doesn't promote quality when friendship has nothing to do with the actual event.

I, for one, think the idea of videos being anonymous is a good one - make them anonymous until viewed and voted on. That way, if you just want to poke around the site and look at some stuff briefly, you can still do so (such an activity doesn't require knowing who submitted what) But if you want to actually participate in the process of sifting, you'd be doing so without knowledge of who you are "helping" and who you are not. Videos would be sifted on their own merits without question. Youi could hide the submission information as well as comments for each unique view until the video was voted on. IN that respect you also prevent people from voting under the influence of general consensus.

....just a thought...

As usual, Krupo, you provide insightful comments. But,

"When have those ever not been sifted right to the top? It's like the new Family guy. I mean, hell. I think it was yesterday that there were THREE Robot chickens in the Top 15." <- Various topics/video genres have hot and cold spells. And as the Woohoo channel proprietor, I've seen many vids that lay sprawled out on the sidewalk with a bottle in their hand and a distinct lack of attention.

I think you missed mine and gunrock's point. It's not that some genres are sometimes hot and sometimes cold, but that when a particular genre is hot, should the obvious easy post be rewarded the same (or more) as a truly well crafted sift talk post, for instance. I would argue not, since the effort and ultimately the long term value to the community is not as great. Since there is obviously no way to control for the vicissitudes of the community, my argument is that non-video-posting activities should be rewarded, on average, in equal measure to original submissions.

some "costs" could be variable, depending on Sift activity: say, if the Sift is quiet on the front page, cost of a *-promote would drift down to a pre-set floor. If videos are being published fast and furious, up the cost, to discourage people from spending Siftars on a promote that'll just flush recently sifted vids off the front page.

That's just absolute genius. Unfortunately, you're talking about implementing an incredibly complex economic structure, which I'm pretty sure would take quite a large coding effort. I'm torn, because the benefit could be very large, but it's unknown.


The issue of cliques, timing, and anon posts is too tangled for me to separate (right now). I believe you are sincere, Krupo, when you say that you do not choose to view or skip a vid based on user name, but my own and several others anecdotal evidence suggests that many folks do. And short of server log data to the contrary, I won't be easily convinced otherwise. That being said, I realize it's just a natural side effect of a community site. Ultimately, Dag pointed out the most important reason why anonymity in the queue is bad (as much I as knee-jerk liked the idea) - catching drive-bys, spammers, and silly newb self-linkers is heavily dependent on the community, and that ability would be severely hampered (if not completely destroyed) by queue anonymity.

I also see one of every star category on the front page right now
I'm not convinced that necessarily indicates an equal distribution of views in the queue. Again, timing and many other factors are in play there.

This is "devolving" into the question I posed earlier, and for that which I had promised not to hijack this thread. Namely, what do the community and the administrators see as valuable contributions, and how should particular contributions be awarded?

The awards are the moderator powers - voting, deading (and fixing), saving, promoting, [channel]ing (heh), discarding, banning, etc. Have I missed something - do you intend to offer benefits via currency other than the moderator powers? A couple of options have been suggested (extra queue slots, for instance).

The contributions have been discussed ad nauseum - original posts are fuck all, fixing deads is easy or hard, talk posts are good or great, etc.

I humbly submit that unless this is tackled comprehensively, you are in effect creating another ad hoc solution which will be loved by some, hated by others, and accepted by most. (where's choggie when I need him?)

So - start with your benefits, and rank them in order of primacy. Then list the contributions in similar order. And start assigning. Any simple or complex economic system based around that is fine, as long as it incorporates the entirety of what VS is about.

Maybe this all seems painfully obvious, but the obvious needs pointing out sometimes.

Wow, what a cool thread I missed out on! I can't believe all these nay sayers!

Like Arvana said, this site is what you make of it in terms of involvement. Adding more content just adds more fun to the game. I've always seen this site as that.

Since this site has evolved into a society, we've since organized...written our own law, we've even begun trading favors for services. The concept of a currency is naturally an organic next step here.

I also in the future would love to see some sort of investment system... in sifts, or sifters perhaps.

I'm buying stock shares in MLX (a staple), Eric, Fed and Farhad

I'm loving the idea legal sift tender, what fun!

(and Karaidl...shortest comment I will win)

Want.

HEY DAG, this is the thread you may be remembering where "currency" started:
http://www.videosift.com/talk/user-referral-link-trackback-sift-evangelism

rotfl for the stocks, Sift Street is on the way!

or "Wall Sift" maybe, even better

btw *quality

Awarding dag with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by looris.

You may have won the battle, but I will win the war.

lol

i think lucky is surprised because it would be a cool new feature and he is the developer.

i think some people are against it because the original idea of just sifting videos, having a fair playing field, and making it easier (not more complicated) to take part is really good. More layers of complexity doesn't necessarily help, even if it would be cool.

It comes down to the question... are we playing a fun game, or building a really good filter for internet video?

i know you want both, but the side of the fence you are on matters. Make the game more fun, and it won't necessarily make a better filter, and vice versa.

Personally i thought it was a fun game just trying to post 50 videos that other people liked, and organising videos into playlists, and meeting nice people, learning something, and dreaming of the channel i might one day own.

If you make it all about earning karma points i am strangely less interested in earning karma points.

no Mink, it's not "karma" points. It has more to do with the natural progression of a society. Maybe I'm seeing the Sift as a sort of civilization game, but it just sounded fun to see the community evolve another step.

Dag started this town, we've gathered, organized, specialized, established law...we even trade... currency is an organic next step is it not?

But really how intrusive could it be to those who simply enjoy posting sifts and commenting. That would never change. Yet it does offer more to the user that enjoys the whole online society thing.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I think you hit it squarely Mink. We want it to be fun and the best Internet filter for online video. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive - and in fact - one fuels the other.

Having gone through a few updates and iterations of VideoSift, I understand now that people are averse to change. Whenever we undergo a big update I always get emails and PMs: "don't do it", "you'll kill VideoSift" etc, etc.

I also know that people don't like change because they are used to doing things in a certain pattern. For example, we used to have all of the host tiles in the sidebar of the submit page. One Sifter used that page as a jumping off point to hunt for videos- jumping to Liveleak, Vimeo etc. When we removed that sidebar, the pattern was broken - and the Sifter couldn't jump from the Sift submit page to find new stuff. (we've put it back now).

So, we know that little changes can cause big annoyances because we don't use the Sift like anyone else does. All we can do in those cases is listen and try and make it easier.

We don't want to change for change sake. We are as passionate about VideoSift as anyone - and we would never knowingly do something that would make VideoSift less fun, or a bad video filter.

This doesn't preclude mistakes. We have made some - and we're not so stubborn that we wouldn't backtrack and kill something if it didn't work.

For this particular feature, we're thinking it through- trying to understand the ups and downs and whether it would make VideoSift more fun and a better video filter.

We have stuff that we share and discuss, mock-up pages, spreadsheets and other docos that we use to try and put it all together. We're not just making shit up. (well maybe a little). But we also canvas the community *early* because- for the change averse human- surprises are usually not happy.

haha - I've seen this video before, but the commentary never struck me as funny until now. Because we all know there is no such thing as preferential voting here!
http://www.videosift.com/video/Fireworks-Idiot